It was quiet in the shop, so we went about organizing this type of machinery. For some unknown but typical reason, none of these shops have enough electrical outlets. It was my understanding there is supposed to be one every twelve feet. This shop has exactly three, all near the back wall.Potato salad. I made a batch for the first time in my life. Wish I’d known it was so easy. When Heather was here last Saturday, one of the first things she did was poke into our fridge and remark there was “nothing to drink”. We checked it afterward and noted there was milk, iced tea, orange juice, lemonade, apple juice, ice water and chocolate milk We are still trying to figure out what she was talking about at eight in the morning. If she meant booze, there is never any around here, certainly not in the fridge.
I’m finally going to see an ear specialist. Years ago, I had the same condition in the same ear, that is, a mild noise similar to a plugged channel from swimming. I’ve read stories about people who are practically deaf from this, but for me it is inconvenient at worst. The last time, it was caused by ordinary impacted ear wax, for I had been wearing those insertable ear plugs. This time, I have no idea what caused it, or for that matter, what causes ear wax.
It turns out a mystery for me is solved, the Creedence Clearwater tunes I could never remember. “Who’ll Stop The Rain” and “Have You Ever Seen The Rain”. Just great you guys, two rain songs at the same time. At some point in my career I’ve played them but I could not tell them apart. Now I can. Same thing happened at rehearsal, neither Eddie or I could recall the oner tune once we played the other. This time, I grabbed a guitar and forced myself to pick out the intros and now I got them separated. Yep, recording a hit song seems to have been considerably less complicated in the 1960s. That’s Am, F, C, G and I don’t even play guitar.
Another mystery is the coconuts that fall on the roof. It certainly wakes me up at night. Ker-thump! We still do not have a ladder that allows us to get up there for inspection. You can tell from the sound it is coconuts, but that is my point. We don’t have any coconut trees around here. Just date palms. Very small dates. All other trees are at the other end of the property. And speaking of that, the jungle has grown back, like I said it would. There are tree branches hanging right over the entranceway and we already have to duck them to use the gate.
The database is in operation. I know the preferred operation would spit out a printed ticket automatically, but I’m the first person to advise all to make sure you completely understand a “manual” database long before you invest in anything more complicated. It was curious to see Alfredo use the computer, as he has never touched on before and I was amused to be reminded of how intimidating it can be. By comparison, I must seem like I was born with a keyboard and mouse at the ends of my hands. It is a fact that I first programmed a computer ten years before most people had ever seen one, and Rusty sent me an Apple IIe from Hong Kong early in the 1980s.
[Author's note: it may annoy some folks to hear me say this, but the two major reasons I did not pursue a career in programming were first, that all the easy programs were written in the early days. Word processors, spreadsheets, databases. Everything after that is games and graphics, which never interested me.
Second, because the easy fields were gone, it meant any progress since the mid-1980s entailed working with a group, a team. Can you see me staying cooped up in a room full of Dilberts? By that date thirty years ago, IBM project teams began to dominate the computer field, and that bad model was eventually copied by MicroSoft. That's why they never seem to get anything to work right and are constantly pumping out new versions. No, kiddies, that is not the same as progress. No, not at all.]
Let me calculate for a moment. If a typewriter “word” is five letters long plus the space, how many keystrokes have I executed in my life? This should include the years when I used a typewriter. My guess is around 60 million. And my unpublished handwritten journals are at least four times that volume.
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